I see icy oysters

[1left]

We had 2 rainy days and now the temp is -1 Celsius in Moncton NB Canada. Since I had the day off I decided to check out and area a few miles out of the city where in some years I find very good Oyster mushrooms in Dec and rarely even into early January.

These guys were frozen hard as a rock and were located to close to well travelled road to harvest for food, though I will be back this way again if we were to receive 3 or 4 warm days together in the near future.

All in all it has been a great month for Oyster mushrooms. Here is a photo of my first fall collection from Oct 20/2013

Oct 26/2013 proved fruitful

And here is a fond memory from a little over a year ago on Nov 14/12. Sugar Maple trees seem to be our best tree for Pleurotus ostreatus in the Maritime provinces, but where ever you live any time in late fall or early winter that there is warm spell keep an eye out for these fine edible and medicinal wild mushrooms on your most common Oyster mushroom host trees. cheers

[Just Me]

Nice Pics
Did you collect the frozen ones??
I have in the past, were good, but cooked asap.

[Sunny_0ne]

What a beautiful bonanza of oysters, even if they were frozen!

[1left]

The Oyster mushrooms in the top 2 photos today I didn't gather as this tree was to close to a somewhat busy road plus the gills were to dark for my liking. Yes I to have gathered newly frozen young Oyster mushrooms and found them very good when cooked the day of the gathering, I have also thawed and dried young frozen Oyster mushroom and the mushrooms once dried and powdered smelled and tasted fine. Seems Oyster mushrooms are a very hardy lot, much like some of the Hygrophorus mushrooms which appear in dry Jack Pine forest sometimes into Dec.

[dakotabob]

Nice pictures. I rarely see oysters out my way in the fall. When I do, it is normally elm oysters and they are not there every year.

[1left]

The Hypsizygus mushrooms are all to rare in my area unfortunately, though we do have another very common fall Oyster type mushroom which some may find its colors and stem unusual so I'll add a few photos here.

Sarcomyxa serotina has a dark green cap with some golden areas when it first appears, it soon turns brownish as it matures, it is eaten by some and used medicinally though I'm not sold on this one yet and have only tried small samples.

The cap may also appear to be dark grey.

Here is a look at the yellow to greenish ball-like stem on the young mushrooms. This mushroom is known as Mukitake and also the Late Fall Oyster. This one is very comfortable in the cold

[dakotabob]

Nice pics!

[Hunter]

Yeah, thanks for those. I had my eye on some P Ostreatus growing from sweet gum cordwood late last fall. Freezing weather hit and they stopped growing, turned grey around the edges, and shrank noticably. They haven't started growing again with warmer weather. Your pics of nice sized ones lead me to think they simply ran out of nutrients. What do you think?

[1left]

I suspect you are on the right track Hunter, our northern P. ostreatus can withstand a few days of periodic freezing and still continue to grow, but a stretch of possibly a solid week of being frozen will result in the end of those fruiting bodies continuing on to maturity. In my area the P ostreatus season usually runs from Oct to early Dec though much depends on the duration of freezing temperatures, Jan 2nd has been the latest or earliest I should say I've found P ostreatus. We do fortunately have a spring oyster mushroom which should be showing up in a while, it is less common and only grows on poplar trees, the name of this mushroom is P. populinus and is shown below. Happy mushroom hunting to you down south.

[Hunter]

Here are what I originally took to be oysters but now am fairly certain are Phyllotopsis nidulans. Early winter I found two hardwood logs within 30 ft. of one another, one with a good supply of P. ostreatus, the other covered with something that looked the same but were orange. Went back today during a mostly fruitless search and found the orange ones coming along well, growing on the same Hickory log. They differ from the oysters not only by color but also the texture of the cap which is almost furry. The one in the pic is typical. Cap spans 3.5 in. The odor is mild and very like oysters though they're sometimes described as having a foul smell.

[Dave W]

Those orange ones are definitely not Oyster Mushrooms. Phyllotopsis nidulans looks like a good ID to me. These appear to be past maturity, so the unpleasant odor one expects may have diminished over time. A young unpleasant-smelling fruit body typically has inrolled margin and hairy upper surface. Tapinella species, sometimes orange, are similar. But the gills are cross-veined and often corrugated/wavy.

[flipjargendy]

1left, thanks for posting those. I live in Minnesota, USA and have always thought that conditions weren't good for oysters to survive into winter. Now I know I should keep an eye out for them in the winter, which means 11 more months of harvesting mushrooms ... as long as the conditions are right like you had.